


Can Spring Be Far Behind?

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: First Time, Friends to Lovers, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-20 13:56:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,174
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18127160
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: This is another of my eternal first-time, friends-to-lovers stories. It's about as low-key as it is possible to be, and at the same time IMO it's one of the most intense I have done. Which one you feel the most? I have no idea. I just know it's quiet, and contained, and whatever the reverse of dramatic is, and at the same time it packs a huge punch for me.Like my Advent stories and the "Ash Wednesday-Valentine's Day" story, it's one of my Mycroft the semi-secular Anglican stories. It suits my mood and the season and the feeling of the world.It includes mourning for New Zealand, and pain at the current state of the world. Be ready.Other than that? I hope you like it, sweeties. I hope you like it.





	Can Spring Be Far Behind?

Pan in—a long, slow pan, approaching 221B Baker Street, the camera taking in the tube station, Regent’s Park, the pavement, Speedy’s. It’s spring—for a very sloppy definition of “spring.” It is no longer certifiably winter. Further the deponent sayeth not.

Oh. Right. It’s Lent.

Not that anyone much cares. This is modern England. Everyone’s spiritual, not religious. And, yet—there’s something about Lent: a season of penance. A time for taking in the enormity of consequences. Classically the consequences are “mankind’s sin” and “the betrayals and rejection handed out to Jesus,” and eventually “the sacrifice.”  
  
That’s when Lent ends—on the lowest of lows, so that Easter can arrive on the highest of highs. Alleluia, the Lord is risen. The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia. But when you’re there in Easter, it’s no longer Lent. Lent clings on until the black heart of despair, promising nothing, offering no consolation.

There’s a man coming out of the front door of 221B. Without thinking, he turns slightly, adjusting the hang of the bronze knocker before gripping his briefcase and the slim shaft of his rolled umbrella together just a bit more firmly. He’s wearing spring clothing—clothing that suggests he’s none too sure of the weather: a light tweed in a soft sage green that sets his thin russet hair off more dramatically than he wished—but it’s a good suit and he didn’t have time to change back out of it this morning, and it was a perfect choice for the weather. The wool is light enough that if the day warms up or the wind drops down he won’t roast, but warm enough to endure the sharp wind coming up off the Thames, with that perfect soft loft only lambs wool offers to hold off chill and damp and even light rain—though he does have his umbrella for that. He’s even wearing a hat, today: a neat olive-green homburg that goes with the suit, and the glorious, slim-line, plain-cut, nearly seamless Oxfords in oxblood brown, that make his slim feet look even longer and thinner than usual.

He turns down the street, catching a glimpse of himself in a car side-mirror. He looks quite fit, he thinks, knowing it for vanity. (Vanity, vanity, all is vanity… our days on Earth are like grass…)

Mycroft is fond of Lent. Not that he tells anyone so. It’s like a preference for Leonard Cohen: so brooding. So bleak. So redemptive. Or a fondness for Ecclesiastes: how can you explain the comfort you find in that simple tract that suggests perhaps the first obligation you have is to try to live simply and well in the face of mortality?

It is Lent. The one mark of his attendance on the season that he had allowed himself was to go to Ash Wednesday. But he was clever. He attended the evening service, and thus only had to wear the smudge on his forehead in the evening, when no one else could see. By the next morning he felt it was fair play to take a shower and wash his face, and his little act of defiant faith disappeared, as befit a man of Mycroft’s profession and inclination.

He looks fit, he thinks again as he passes a plate glass window. He’s walking south, toward Marylebone Road, where he intends to have his driver meet him at the Secure Parking around the corner. So much more civilized than making the man attempt to pick him up at the roadside in traffic…

Traces of Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Overture” keep teasing his mind, but it’s days till Easter. It’s still the darkness of Lent, and he fully intends to wallow in it properly.  
  
He is spiritual, not religious. He’s entirely too modern to “believe.” But he appreciates that there is poetic truth in ritual, and there is England in a good C of E Via Media Lent, neither too high church nor too lustily low church. He slips his phone from his pocket, and searches until he finds his playlist for Lent.

O Sacred Head, Now Wounded… his near-invisible little Bluetooth earbuds catch it. Later the list will give him Paul Simon’s “American Song,” using the same melodic line, and eventually it will offer him the oldest, the truest, the most original—Bach’s Passion Chorale, original German and all. The stately grief is perfect. It makes of grief a sacrament fit to lay before the Lord…

Beautiful.

He has been tired, of late. All his life working to make England safe, and now, over the past few years, the mess it’s in. This mad Brexit mess. The polarization—all around the world. The furious resurgence of the worst of mankind’s sins, raging at years of repression: bigotry, greed, spite, power-hunger, war-lust, all the things Dear Winston and his generation worked so hard to ensure would never arise again in the bad, old way. Now it’s everywhere.

He is going to church again tonight, he thinks. He will light a candle. This time for New Zealand. It seems all he does lately is light candles. Light candles _and_ curse the darkness: how efficient. Sometimes he wonders what good any of his actions do—the official ones as the silent power at the heart of MI6, the unofficial ones as a mere supplicant, lighting a candle, saying a prayer. “Thoughts and prayers.”

What good has any of his life been, if it’s all going to end up here, rapidly circling the drain?

He’s almost past the Tube station when he sees a familiar figure come loping up from the depths to the light of day.

Another man looking quite fit, and there’s no vanity in noticing that at all. Lust, maybe. A bit of steamy longing. It’s simply not possible to fail to notice that DCI Lestrade just keeps improving with age, his character growing clearer and more admirable on his face, the beauty of his form matching the purity of his spirit. A good man, indeed. His hair shines blue-merle brindle in the pale sunlight.

Without even meaning to, Mycroft lifts his free hand in a wave.

Lestrade almost fails to see it. Then his eyes light, and his own arm rises, and Mycroft can hear a muted “Oi!” over the rumble of London. The Inspector waits for a clear moment, and darts, jaywalking, across the street, meeting Mycroft on the other side.

“Lucky thing you being here,” he says, cheerily. “Was going to Sherlock’s to ask if he knew what you were up to.”

Mycroft scoffs. “I do not entrust Sherlock with my calendar, or share with him the darker details of my daily schedule, Inspector. If you need to know, call my assistant.”

“Aye, but Andy-pants is one step too high for a casual ‘is the gov busy, eh?’ now isn’t she?” Lestrade says, with a grin. “Not a major issue, you see. Just been long enough since we’ve swapped data that I thought I’d see what time you might have to gab.”

Mycroft lifts a brow, and considers. “I was planning on…” He stops. He had planned to call his driver, and to have his driver take him to St. Martin-in-the-fields to light his candle and pray his prayers, and if he was lucky hear someone rehearsing something. Hardly crucial. And, yet…

He slips his phone from his pocket and turns off his playlist. The stately measures of the hymn still echo in his heart. He cocks his head, and looks at Lestrade, and takes a leap of faith.

“I was going to church, actually. If you don’t mind coming along, it’s as good a place as any to talk. Better than most. I can always light my candle when we’re done.”

He sees Lestrade stop and _see_ him. It’s a dangerous thing, to be seen. More dangerous to be seen by deep brown eyes that make you think of the most delicious food, the most beautiful sloe-eyed deer, the warmest brown wool cardigan, the sweetest fruitcake, the darkest brown milk stout—all luxurious things. The sort of thing you dare not indulge in during Lent…

“Church?”

Mycroft lifts a shoulder. “I’m spiritual, not religious,” he says, hearing the faint priggish precision, and thinking in irony that he’s a bit of a twit sometimes. Heaven forbid he be thought religious! And yet, there’s no mockery in Lestrade’s eyes. Just curiosity.

“I’ve been feeling quite Lenten, lately,” Mycroft risks saying, unsure the other man will hear.

Something stirs in him when compassionate comprehension lights those eyes, dark as a pint of Newcastle.

“Oh, aye. I hear y’ there. Helluva time lately, innit?” Lestrade shakes his head, morose. “Hell of a day when you’re more scared a native-born Cockney’s gonna get the idea to blow someone up than you are that the local mosque’s gonna turn out a jihadi wi’ a machete. Bad times. Stupid times. So—you light a candle rather than curse the darkness?”

“I’m a belt and suspenders man,” Mycroft says. “I generally try to do both. Sometimes simultaneously.”

Lestrade shouts with laughter.

He would make a perfect Father Christmas, Mycroft thinks, heart aching. Not the fat American Santa, but the lean British Father Christmas in a holly green robe, shining with laughter and good will to all people.

He gets Mycroft’s jokes.

Why is that simple thing so devastating? Why does it shake Mycroft’s Lenten spirit, whispering that Lent ends, and when it ends—in the darkest dark, beyond all hope, beyond any promise—when Lent ends, it ends in the shattering joy of Easter?

“In any case,” he says, looking away from that brilliant male beauty, “I was headed for St. Martin in the Fields. We can talk in the car. If you want, the driver can take you home. Or you can stay with me a bit, and we can talk more after. Have dinner, perhaps.”

“Sounds good,” Lestrade says, and waits while Mycroft contacts his driver. They walk together, around the corner, along Marylebone, and to the car park. A few minutes later, the driver is there. A few minutes after that and they’re passing through London, dark and sleek and hidden behind tinted glass.

“Funny,” Lestrade says, watching the traffic, “we never do anything social.”

“We’re _spies,_ ” Mycroft points out, voice tart. “One doesn’t socialize with one’s assets.”

“Don’t be silly—that’s the best kind,” Lestrade snips back—but with humor, teasing. “No one notices your assets when they make good sense as your social companions. ‘S why Sherlock’s been such a good asset so long: makes sense for two detectives to work together, talk together, go out to the pub every so often together. Silly we never thought to pick up there—Sherlock’s brother, Sherlock’s Met cop—got enough in common to justify a bit of social time, yeah?”

Mycroft considers. “You do know I’m gay? It would have had implications.”

“Yeah? And?” Lestrade shrugs. “Me, I’m bi. Not that it matters. I mean, it’s not like there’s no reason to get together except sex.” He chuckles, and shoots Mycroft a sly-eye and a smile. “Not that it’s horrible if people thought that, either. Bit of a catch, if anything. But for the love of God, Holmes, it’s not like we’re hormonal adolescents. Two adults with a lot in common to talk about is good enough. Especially if you play chess, or cards, or pool, or shoot darts or something as well. Real trifecta, there: go out for a good pub feed, a game of darts, and a bit of gossip about your brother.”

Mycroft grudgingly concedes, while muttering that it sounds quite reckless to him. What he really means is that it seems far too suggestive of things he can’t risk hoping for. He falls silent, and they don’t speak again until they’ve reached St. Martin-in-the-Fields.

After sending the driver down the way to find parking, Mycroft leads the way into the church. He nods to the rack of candles, some always lit and flickering in the dim light of the nave. “That first, I think.”

Lestrade grunts, and asks if Mycroft minds if he lights one, too.

“Of course not. It’s church.” Though he feels uncomfortable at the thought—more so when they stand together, each lighting a candle, each bowing his head in prayer.

Who knew that it felt so intimate? To pray together…. Even if you are spiritual, not religious, there’s a vulnerability to it. A humility.

Somewhere nearby, in a back room, someone is singing. “God So Loved The World.” Symphonie Pathetique. Beethoven, to match Bach from earlier. A high, delicate boy’s treble, practicing a solo…

“For God so loved the world, for God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten son…”

One does not believe in such things anymore. Not believe-believe. But people are killing people around the world, and hearts ache, and even the most spiritual of spiritual souls cry out and long for hope at the end of Lent. Mycroft, horrified, feels tears prickle his eyes. He is startled to hear Lestrade’s breath, heavy, burdened, sad, sighing.

So dark a time, and likely to grow darker still. And here they are, the two old, jaded, worldly spies, side by side, copper and civil servant, lighting their little candles and saying their prayers and feeling the heat of each other’s bodies, not a foot away from each other.

“Are you ever afraid,” Lestrade asks, his voice rough.

“No. Yes.” Mycroft swallows. “Almost always, lately. It’s out of my control. The madmen have the reins and they want chaos to come crashing down.”

“Do you think there is any hope?”

“I think—there is always hope. We may manage to knock the world back to the stone age. The dinosaur age. The great extinctions. But I think someone will survive. Or someone will replace us—maybe octopus.” He considers, and says, “They seem so mysterious and peaceful. So soft. I held one, once. The suckers grab tight, but their bodies are like mist and satin. Maybe the next great species will be a sentient octopus.”

And there is light—

Easter came early.

Lestrade is laughing, deep belly-laughs, and Mycroft finds himself joining. Together they chuckle and smile at each other and shake their heads.

“Then God bless the octopoi,” Lestrade says.

“May they be better at all this than we are,” Mycroft adds, a touch of weariness returning.

Silence settles between them. They walk back down the nave.

Another leap of faith—something he could not have done mere minutes ago. Mycroft clears his throat.

“Instead of dinner out—a pub or restaurant—would you like to come over to my place? I have the makings of good bacon sarnies, and beer. And maybe we could play a hand of cards. Or something.”

He hears a soft huff of amusement. Lestrade says, “Yeah, sure,” with a smile in the tones of his voice.

So they walk, silent, out of the church, and silent to the Jaguar, sleek and black and beautiful, and they drive to Mycroft’s place on Pall Mall, opposite the Diogenes. Mycroft uses the keycard and his password to get them into the lobby, then the lift, then into his flat. He ushers his guest in.

His guest.

The flat is dark, with the chill and damp of not-winter, not-spring still in it. He’s been saving fuel. It’s not cold enough to need the heat on, after all.

“I can warm the place up,” he says. “Or start a fire in the fireplace.”

“Whatever.” It’s not a hostile, passive-aggressive “whatever.” Lestrade really has no opinion one way or another. “Nice place.”

“Bachelor workaholic’s place. I keep some things I care about here. Some out at the family estate.” He doesn’t admit that there are too few things he cares about. “Sarnies?”

“Lead the way.”

They work together in the kitchen, the rhythm of passing and sharing and building their meals bringing out small talk Mycroft did not know they possessed between them. What brand of mustard do you like—besides Coleman’s, of course Coleman’s. HP? Oh—Daddies. Must be the Somerset in you. Chutney? Yes!

They are at ease together. And yet—Mycroft knows he has invited the Inspector back for more, and he knows the Inspector knows, and he knows the Inspector knows he knows, and that the energy of their mutual knowing goes around and around, building tension in the heart of that ease.

They eat standing up. They talk about less painful things than the dark world of Lent. They talk about music, and Sherlock’s old cases, and Rosie Watson. They talk about movies…old and new, things they love and things they hate.

They wipe the brown sauce and chutney off their fingers and mouths. They wash the plates and put away the sliced bacon and the tomatoes and lettuce and baps.

They look each other in the face.

“Is this what you want?” Lestrade asks, not in fear or uncertainty, but with the calm of a man preparing for something he’s looking forward to—a march down an aisle, the presentation of a medal, boarding an airplane to someplace good. “You’re sure?”

“I’m sure,” Mycroft says, and steps close, sliding his hands around Lestrade’s waist, feeling the firm muscle and the soft, slight layer of fat. He brushes his face over Lestrade’s, then kisses him.

It’s slow. It’s safe…as though nothing could ever reach them here, this night, this place. They warm to each other, sigh, touch. Fingers unbutton buttons, unzip zips. They kick their shoes off, toe off their socks.

“Bedroom?”

“Lovely…”

If forced, both men might admit it’s not the hottest, most dramatic sex either ever had. It doesn’t need to be. It’s dawn, and hope, and tenderness, and a candle in the window to guide each other home. It’s hot chocolate on a freezing midnight. It’s spring frogs singing when the weather turns. It’s the heavy perfume of lilac, assuring them that just as every Sunday punctuates Lent, promising Easter still to come, they can be each other’s Easters.

Thinking this, feeling quite evil, Mycroft risks saying, “Alleluia, the Lord is risen.”

Lestrade laughs, and Mycroft feels forgiven all the way down to his marrow. Lestrade touches him. “You, too,” he says.

Mycroft is spiritual, not religious, so he doesn’t correct him or murmur “The Lord is risen indeed, Alleluia.” Instead he wraps his hand around Lestrade’s hand, showing him the steady pulse and the firm rub that he likes best.

They do not come at the same time—but they both come. There are no tears or anguish. No shame. Instead a growing contentment, brighter and brighter, shining on their faces, on the pale winter-blanched skin of both lovers, in their eyes, in their hearts.

“We should do this more often,” Lestrade says, lying happy, one leg trailing off the bed.

“So we should,” Mycroft agrees, and rolls over, hugging his new lover close. “We definitely should.”

And it was spring, and the stone had rolled from the grave.


End file.
